Luke.stirling

It’s a start, anyway. Here are Ten Facebook Pages You Need to Stop Sharing. They are:

InfoWars
Foodbabe
Eat Clean. Train Mean. Live Green.
Joseph Mercola
Prevention Magazine
Natural News
Collective Evolution
MindBodyGreen
Spirit Science
The Mind Unleashed

There’s a lot of pseudo-nutrition and quackery in there, and also a fair bit of “spirituality”. But there are so many other pages that are about as bad! I bail when I see the words “spirit”, “detox”, “cleanse”, “toxins”, as well as anything to do with religion.

Toyama Bay got a visit from a mythological being, all dressed in red, on Christmas day. It was beautiful.

It seems to be Architeuthis dux, and is about 4 meters long. It just cruised in, ambled about, and the authorities plan to just let it swim away. If it can — giant squid on the surface tend to be sick and unhappy. But still…! I’m waiting for the day one swims up the Pomme de Terre river to bring me presents.

There’s more discussion about this squid (in English!) on TONMO.

Hovertext: The really hard thing is to click the latch into place while the fabric of spacetime is being destroyed.

 Discount BAHFest tickets are selling fast!

I was raised attending a very judgmental, intolerant, authoritarian parochial school. I spent the first few years of elementary school being absolutely terrified that the God they taught about was pissed at me for one thing or another, and that I was going to screw up and go to Hell for any number of things.

Then my dog died around 3rd grade, and my teacher told me – well, scolded me, actually – that she wasn’t going to Heaven, because animals couldn’t make the affirmative choice to accept Christ. This really bothered me, because I’d been taught that basically the whole point of life on Earth was living it according to all these strict rules, so we could go to Heaven.

Shortly after that, I asked one of the authority figures at the school if my uncle, who was the coolest and kindest and most thoughtful person I knew, was going to Hell because he was a Buddhist. They furiously denounced him as evil and bad, and that, yes, he was going to Hell.

This didn’t make any sense at all to me, because my uncle was a good and honest and awesome person who was an inspirational figure to me in my life, and I couldn’t understand why his religious choice meant he was going to suffer for eternity. I mean, I get why the people teaching us this version of their religion believed that, but it didn’t make sense to me.

And that’s when it all started to unravel for me, because it just didn’t make sense. Also, around this time, my mom went religion shopping. Every weekend we were at a different church, and they all basically said, “We are right, everyone else is wrong, give us your money.” I was still really young – probably 10 or 11– and it just felt like a giant scam to me. I wasn’t getting anything positive out of having religion in my life, and I resented having to spend time sitting through sermons and things like that. I started to feel like religion was a very complex story that they were telling us to keep us afraid and controlled.

I think it was in 5th or 6th grade that I read Edith Hamilton’s MYTHOLOGY for the first time, and I remember thinking that these gods in various myths were also stories people told each other to explain things that they didn’t understand or needed to put into a certain context. I did some kind of math, and realized that it was all fiction. All of it. It was all stuff that they made up, and I didn’t need that stuff in my life.

I’ve gone through various phases of not having religion in my life, from being the smug, condescending r/atheist type when I was a teenager to a much more tolerant “your beliefs belong to you, just keep them out of my face” type that I mostly am, now. 

I get that some people want and need religion in their lives, and I know plenty of people who get a geat deal of comfort and joy and positive benefit from their faith. I also get that the vast majority of religious people are kind and awesome and take the teachings of the Biblical Jesus to heart in wonderful ways that inspire them to be kind and generous and patient. I also absolutely despise the American Taliban types who try to use religion to deny rights and equality to people they don’t like.

I would prefer that religious institutions and public institutions be firewalled off from each other. I’d prefer that religious organizations were taxed, and that the scamming televangelists that John Oliver exposed this year would go to jail for fraud.

But I am a realist, and I know that won’t happen in my lifetime.

Thanks for your question.

tastefullyoffensive:

by Loading Artist

In my latest Guardian column, The problem with self-driving cars: who controls the code?, I take issue with the "Trolley Problem" as applied to autonomous vehicles, which asks, if your car has to choose between a maneuver that kills you and one that kills other people, which one should it be programmed to do? (more…)

As a kid I’d watch my dad as he’d throw (his unit of measurement) some olive oil, onions, garlic, lemon, and olives into a pan to make a quick pasta. It’s learning to cook this way that gave me a love and appreciation for food and cooking. That’s what was so amazing about Twelve Recipes. When you read it, you feel like you’re getting that private cooking lesson from a family member. A family member who happens to be a really really good cook.

Through the book Cal Peternell, chef at renowned restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, lays out twelve-ish basic foods and techniques that he believes will let you eat well for the rest of your life. If you’re a novice in the kitchen, the first chapter eases you in by teaching you how to make toast. No, seriously — toast. I was skeptical at first too, I consider myself to be somewhat of a toast veteran, but after reading a few pages I actually learned something. I had no idea that to make thin crisp toast you should actually use a loaf of stale bread since it’s easier to cut. That’s the beauty of the book – even if you’ve been making toast, grilling meat, or cooking rice all your life, there’s still something to learn.

In the best way, this isn’t your standard cookbook. You won’t find a single recipe on each page, you’ll actually find two or three, interweaved by a story about a family ping pong game. The photos are beautiful, but they’re not your standard food-porn shots that make your home cooking feel insecure. Then there are the sweet little illustrations that were done by Peternell’s wife and kids peppered throughout (see what I did there?). All these ingredients add up to a beautiful book that’s sure to inspire your inner cook. – JP LeRoux

Twelve Recipes
by Cal Peternell
HarperCollins
2014, 320 pages, 7 x 9.1 x 1.1 inches
$16 Buy a copy on Amazon

Last one before Christmas. Wish best wishes to all our readers!

During my formative years, LEGO meant horseback riding and windsurfing. (And also, teeth marks on any pieces that were difficult to take apart.) So when I stumbled upon Andrew Tate‘s most recent build today, I was hit with a pleasant wave of nostalgia. Even without the terrific lettering across the roof of the cafe, this build screams “Classic Paradisa” with its curved windows, muted color palette, and diverse minifig activity. Where else would a speedo-wearing, boombox-toting, roller-skating minifig fit in so perfectly?

Andrew explained that this build was inspired by Sand Dollar Cafe and Breezeway Cafe. Hopefully, his awesome scene will inspire other builders to try their hand at the Classic Paradisa theme too. Be sure to check out all of Andrew’s excellent builds here.

me_IRL

archiemcphee:

There’s always more baking going on (and thank goodness for that), but a disturbance in the Force tells us that the crown for the 2015 gingerbread has been claimed by Oslo-based Swedish 3D artist Caroline Eriksson (previously featured here).

Eriksson just unveiled this incredibly awesome gingerbread statue of Darth Vader, which she posted to her Facebook page with the description, “Three weeks and three fire alarms later…”

Impressive. Most impressive.

[via Robot 6]

Thirty percent of adult Americans are teetotalers. Ten percent consume an average of 0.02 drinks a week. Another ten percent have 0.14 drinks per week (I'm in this category, as I will have a taste of my wife's wine when she orders a glass). The next ten percent has 0.63 drinks a week, followed by 2.17 drinks, 6.25 drinks, and 15.28 drinks. The top ten percent consumes a whopping 74 drinks a week. That's over 10 drinks a day!

I didn't find data for the top once percent of drinkers, but these are probably the folks who are dying from drinking. According to the Washington Post, alcohol deaths are at a 35-year high. Last year 30,700 Americans died from alcohol poisoning and cirrhosis. That beats heroin overdose deaths (11,000) by a longshot.

A recent study quantified the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of common recreational drugs. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance, followed by heroin and cocaine. The reason? The ratio between a toxic dose and a typical dose is extremely narrow with alcohol. If you're happily buzzed at say, three drinks, three more might make you sick, and three after that may put you in alcohol poisoning territory.

For this reason, some researchers are starting to urge public health officials to focus more on the dangers posed by alcohol, and less on the dangers of less toxic drugs, like marijuana and LSD.

In 2012, a sharp-eyed police officer in Kansas spotted Robert Harte leaving a hydroponics store with a bag of supplies. Soon after, the police fished through Harte's garbage and found some wet leaves, which tested positive for marijuana. That was all they needed to obtain a warrant to conduct a surprise raid. "The family was held at gunpoint for two and a half hours while Johnson County sheriff's deputies went through the house, after which they gave the Hartes a receipt saying 'no items taken,' in lieu of an apology," reports Reason. A lab test revealed the leaves to be tea, and the hydroponics supplies were for a "horticultural project involving tomato, squash, and melon plants."

The Hartes sued the police department for the fruitless raid, spending $25,000 in legal fees in an attempt to look at the polices' affidavit supporting the search warrant. They lost, because U.S. District Judge John Lungstrum said police acted legally and reasonably. The act of going to a hydroponics store and the results of the notoriously inaccurate field tests were sufficient to meet the standards for probable cause, he said.

Image: Wikimedia

mediamattersforamerica:

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Ugh. People are the worst.

"Piles of life jackets used by refugees and migrants to cross the Aegean sea from the Turkish coast remain stacked on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, on Dec. 16, 2015... --Santi Palacios / AP

Brian Kelly (aka The Points Guy) reviewed what it was like to fly Etihad's Residence suite from New York JFK to Abu Dhabi. His "seat" was a three-cabin suite.

Etihad forgot to load his baggage on the flight.

The 451 HTTP error code, first proposed in 2012 as a tribute to Ray Bradbury's classic novel is now an IETF standard and is the preferred error message for a server to send to a browser when content is blocked for legal reasons. (more…)

It has only nine pieces, but each is a sprawling, intersecting fractal nightmare: "you can provide people with the solution and they still can't solve it."

The creations of Oscar van Deventer (check his youtube channel for all his puzzle designs) you can buy them at Laser Exact for fifty euros.

It's weirdy satisfying watching the pieces disappear into the pattern:

James Cherry has posted images of his beautiful F-4J Phantom II which I highlighted as my “Best In Show” in the roundup of BRICK2015 in London.

The model is 1.2m long, contains around 6,000 pieces, and took James nearly 5 months to design and build. But beyond the impressive scale and the lovely custom stickering, it’s the smooth curves and the shaping of the various sections which make this creation stand out for me. I also really like the handful of studs left exposed, creating a feel of riveted panels around the intakes.

James managed to squeeze no less than 5 Power Functions motors inside the model, allowing the rudder and various flaps to be operated using a remote control. It was very cool to see these features “in the brick” in London last weekend, and I wasn’t alone in thinking it was a highlight of the show. Carl Greatrix – one of the best LEGO plane modelers around – spent ages examining this creation and pronounced it “Bloody good”. High praise indeed.

I’d heartily recommend a visit to James’ Flickr photostream to check out all the details of this amazing model in the close-up images, as well as photos of his beautiful custom-chrome P-51 Mustang model.

hashtagdion:

micdotcom:

For more on the Fermi Paradox and why alien life hasn’t found us yet. (Infographic via futurism)

I’ve blogged about this paradox before, but I’ve never read all of these resolutions to it, nor have it seen it explained in such a simple infographic.

My favorite is the same as their favorite.

The City of London Police's Intellectual Property Crime Unit's breathless press-release about their raid on a "gang suspected of uploading and distributing tens of thousands of karaoke tracks online" obscures the truth: they busted three middle-aged dudes who loved singing, so they hunted down otherwise unavailable tracks and shared them with other karaoke fans, not making a penny in the process. (more…)

Dallas cops put Armaan Singh Sarai in jail for three days because someone mistook the solar panel on his phone-charging backpack for a bomb. (more…)

Former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde has always been very outspoken about people’s inherent drive to copy things.

Last year he paid the ultimate price of sacrificing his freedom for his involvement in TPB, but that hasn’t changed his core ‘kopimi‘ values.

One of Peter’s major frustrations is how the entertainment industries handles the idea of copying. When calculating the losses piracy costs, they often put too much value on pirated copies.

This is something Peter knows all too well, as he still owes various movie and music companies millions in damages.

However, this hasn’t stopped him from continuing to copy. In fact, he’s just built the ultimate copying machine using a Raspberry Pi, an LCD display and some Python code.

With these three ingredients the “Kopimashin” makes 100 copies of the Gnarls Barkely track “Crazy” every second. This translates to more than eight million copies per day and roughly $10 million in ‘losses.’

Crazy indeed.

Peter’s machine is part of an art project about the value of digital copies which he’s preparing for an upcoming exhibition.

“I want to show the absurdity on the process of putting a value to a copy. The machine is made to be very blunt and open about the fact that it’s not a danger to any industry at all,” Sunde tells TF.

“But following their rhetoric and mindset it will bankrupt them. I want to show with a physical example – that also is really beautiful in it’s own way – that putting a price to a copy is futile.”

The Kopimashin does make real copies of the track, but they are sent to /dev/null, which means that they are not permanently stored.

The most important message, however, is that the millions of dollars in losses the industry claims from him and the other TPB founders are just as fictitious as the number displayed on the Kopimashin.

“The damages in the TPB case are equally ludicrous of course. The idea behind it is of course never to get that money paid, but to scare people into silence and obedience.”

The millions of dollars the industry is said to lose stands in no relation to actual damages according to Peter. On the contrary, he believes that piracy positively affects sales.

“To quote Kenneth Goldsmith, I think the file-sharing trials of this century are going to be our obscenity trials. The claims are never valid, they’re never based on actual damage. If that was the case, we would have been awarded money.”

“The economics work differently in a global networked society. But the industries will not change. That’s why we need to take them down,” he adds.

The Pirate Bay co-founder hopes to finalize 13 Kopimashins for various exhibitions and plans to sell a few as well. In the meantime, he’s continuing to ‘bankrupt’ poor Gnarls Barkley and his label.

“The one running at my home is up to 120 million copies as we speak. That equals $150 million in losses to the recording industry – following their logic,” Peter says.

To get his copying effort recognized Peter contacted the Guinness Book of Records this week, who are currently reviewing his application.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

It's even a little Santa-y, with Christmasy colors of red and green.

(more…)

The US government has tried to apply its arms export control rules to 3D model files that describe firearms, and declare that publishing those files is the same thing as exporting guns, and is therefore prohibited. Whatever you think about 3D printed guns, love 'em or loathe 'em, that's a terrible way to deal with them. (more…)

These are the "walking palm trees" of Ecuador. Each year, they could walk as much as 20 meters. Slower than the Ents from Lord of the Rings but, well, real.

“As the soil erodes, the tree grows new, long roots that find new and more solid ground, sometimes up to 20m,” Peter Vrsansky, a palaeobiologist from the Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences Bratislava, tells the BBC. “Then, slowly, as the roots settle in the new soil and the tree bends patiently toward the new roots, the old roots slowly lift into the air. The whole process for the tree to relocate to a new place with better sunlight and more solid ground can take a couple of years.”

Tragically, the incredible Sumaco Biosphere Reserve where they live is being chopped down.

“This [cutting] is a shame, as Ecuador is one of the world countries with the highest partition of protected areas," Vransky says, But the trees can’t walk fast enough to escape the chainsaw and the machetes backed by current legislation."